Greetings all! I barely had time to sneak in a post today – Wilhelmina and I have been down by the river, playing in the water. Later we’re headed over to her folks burrow for a picnic! Lots of goodies – snap peas, petunias and broccoli!

Since I’m running short on time – due to my hachacha date – I’m going to show you the easiest form in the World to add to your WordPress.org site.

First, go to your dashboard go to Plugins>Add New

In the search box type the word Formidable. If you aren’t sure how to install a plug-in, check this post.

Now on your dashboard, you’ll have a new plugin called Formidable. Go ahead and click on it, then choose Forms.

Now we’ll click on Add New

If you want a quick contact us form, choose that on the left hand side. Want to build your own? Choose Blank form, then create.

In the top box, add a title to your form. Like Want a free Bookmark? In the small box below, you can add in instructions to anyone who might want to email you for a free bookmark.

On the right hand side are a collection of items you can drag onto your form. The top ones are for the freebie version. Here I chose single line text.

In the drop down box I marked that it was required information, I put in the field size (how many letters wide I think it should be) and titled it, First Name, Last Name. Then, click update.

Here I’ve used a single line, followed by a paragraph for their mailing address and checkboxes as to which type of bookmark they’d rather receive.

After that, I’ll click update, and move on to settings.

Here, I want my submit button to say Submit, so that’s good, and the confirmation message is ready to go. The only other buttons I would check under that tab is emails to make sure it arrives in the correct email box. If you’ve made changes here, click update and lets look at Entries.

Under here, you can see a variety of ways to publish your new form. The easiest is to go to option #3. This is shortcode. You can use any of these 3 items listed here and just copy and paste the code in a blank page and voila. Your form is complete. Don’t believe me? Go look at preview, you’ll be shocked what that little bit of shortcode will do!

This is Woodie signing off – I’ve got just enough time to grab a handful of tulips from Carrie’s garden for Wilhemina’s mother!

Tameri, you can use forms for tons of things! Ask your commenters how they feel about anything – would you eat raw seafood? then add in a checkbox for yes or no. Kind of like a poll. You can have a contest and ask people to fill out their email address so you can notify the winner. This would further double as adding people to a newsletter. If you give away an ebook, you can again ask people to fill out their email address so you can mail the winner a book. You could send a coupon for 10% off a smashwords book. It’s entirely up to your imagination!